The end of December is a good time to take stock of the year’s work. The adoption of the 12th sanctions package is a telling result of the EU's policy on the Russian (or rather, anti-Russian) track over the past year.
We are sure that this package will be remembered by EU Member States as completely unnecessary for the overwhelming majority of them, paradoxical as it may sound. Neither their national economies nor their people needed it. It was the EU bureaucratic machine that needed another round of restrictions in the first place. And now Brussels is somewhat proud of sticking to its ambitious sanctions plan.
The sanctions pressure on Russia answers the very reasonable question of what the "rules-based order" promoted by the European Union is all about. It includes applying extraterritorial illegitimate restrictions and political blackmail, using neo-colonial approaches, and forcing relations with third countries along the lines of "whoever is not with us is against us".
Today, nobody in Brussels bothers to explain the purpose of the sanctions. The Russian economy has not been "torn to pieces", attempts to isolate us in the international arena, including on the Brussels platform, have failed miserably, and the goal of "inflicting a strategic defeat" has not been achieved – nor could it have been achieved a priori. All this was initially obvious to many people, but not to those in the European Quarter. It remains to warn in advance the politicians who may be dissatisfied with the results of the European or national elections scheduled for 2024: they will have themselves to blame, not some "Russian disinformation" or "Moscow's interference in democratic electoral processes". It is precisely the twelve packages of anti-Russian sanctions that have undermined the foundations of EU Member States' economies and the well-being of their population.
For our part, on New Year's Eve, we would like to reassure ordinary Europeans that we remain committed to living with them in peace and mutual understanding, based on respect for each other's interests. However, as long as the EU political establishment – and this is evidenced by the 12th package – continues, alas, to dream of "strangling" us with sanctions, it will not be possible to build relations with the European Union that are in Russia's interest.
